Bombay Bicycle Club – My Big Day Review

A big day indeed for bands attempting to capture their heyday experiences. No longer are Bombay Bicycle Club the hot commodity they are – and the fried egg eyes of their man on the album cover are a sign of where they dwindled to. Sunny side up they may be, there is little brightness for the band beyond their image here, fluffy and exposed to eye-piercing shaders. Doomed to rely on their promising debut and sift through the rest of mediocre wreckage as so many mid-2000s indie rock bands are, Bombay Bicycle Club marks My Big Day as a slight change of pace. Their quality is still of the middle-of-the-road variety, but they are still learning from the blistering mistakes which left them in an unremarkable state after So Long, See You Tomorrow.  

With a soft spot for some of their tunes but none in Spotify playlist circulation, hopping into My Big Day feels more like an intrepid adventure through the past than a signal to listen in deep to new and relevant music. My Big Day opens up with Just A Little More Time – the band are asking nicely after all. Their dependence on featured artists to patch up the holes of their positioned indifference from members of the public sees heavy-hitting names like Damon Albarn and Holly Humberstone featured within. No prizes for guessing the best tracks of the bunch. Certainly not opener Just A Little More Time, which could have done with some in the recording studio. A fine opener – a neutral and middle-of-the-road piece with nice enough mixing and not much else. It is a flickering, continuing problem Bombay Bicycle Club face off against on this record. 

Picking up the pace with I Want To Be Your Only Pet with a stronger and bass-heavy bit of hypnosis on the beat, the clamouring and whining lyrics associated with the title are particularly strange. Reinforcements and featured artists are called in soon after. There is enough genuine connection and passion behind Jack Steadman’s vocals to make it work, at least. Double bill My Big Day and Turn the World On give vagueness a chance and fail spectacularly. Despite the track record Albarn has – his better-than-average experiences as a solo artist – he brings little to Heaven. For those who enjoy his limited vocal range here, they can listen to his work elsewhere. The same goes for Humberstone. 

Neither are expected to do much more than bring the value of their name to this project. For all its good intentions and hopeful experiences, Bombay Bicycle Club are not up to scratch on this record. My Big Day marks a chance for the once-relevant classic indie band to step into the fold once more. It does not, as it turns out, bring about their big day and blast them back to the spotlight where they feel they belong. Instead, a tired end suitably shows out the band with a lacklustre effort arguably worse off than the one from over a decade before it. Nothing disruptive or present in changing the course for a band whose best efforts are still off the mark and flagging well behind the relevant charmers of the modern indie scene at present. Harmlessly listenable is never a good place to find your band.